My ancestors

My ancestors — the greatgrandparents, the grandparents, and my parents — all said the same thing. It’s nice for you to think about us, but we’re not important. It’s the future that counts.

If the past had been so important, than they would have told me, in much greater detail, about their lives and what they had done. They would have told me the importance of remembering their lives, and the importance of passing that on to my children.

It was the absence of those details that was most striking, because my forebears expected many things of me — that I be honest and generous, and courageous, that I become educated, and that I be married and raise children. And, in so many ways, I have felt guilty for not living up to what they expected of me.

But they never expected me to remember, or to visit their graves, and I have not.